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Google is hoping a century-long study will help unlock the key to happier, healthier and high-performing workers — and researchers say its something all businesses could easily mimic and benefit from.

Google’s been collecting the “gDNA” for two years now, wrote Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations, in a blog explaining the study for the Harvard Business Review.

More than 4,000 employees complete two anonymous, in-depth surveys per year, answering questions about work attitudes, culture, relationships and more.

Employees can opt out at any time and are encouraged to continue to fill out the surveys, should they wish, if they leave the company.

The focus is on the science behind how people work, Bock wrote, inspired by the Framingham Heart Study, which has been ongoing since 1948, providing a wealth of data and insight about heart disease.

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The goal is to then take the science and make work better, Jennifer Kurkoski, a Google research scientist and member of Bock’s team, told the Star.

“Work is an activity that occupies a large portion of our waking hours,” Kurkoski said. “How can we make this an amazing experience for as many people as possible? Work doesn’t have to suck. What can we learn about how to match people with jobs and teams… that can help people find satisfaction in the work that they do and the hours they spend in the office?”

While the time frame is “a little ambitious,” said Kevin Kelloway, a Canada research chair in occupational health psychology, studies like it are necessary.

“Frankly, even if they can carry that out for four or five years we’ll learn a lot,” Kelloway said, since past studies — while highlighting the importance of work-life balance — have been smaller in comparison, like “a snapshot.”

“With the Google study … if they can sustain participation in it, is more like a movie,” he said.

Two years in, Google has been able to differentiate between two types of employees: segmentors and integrators.

Segmentors, which make up 31 per cent of surveyed employees, are able to distinguish between work-related stress and the rest of their lives, Bock wrote.

The other 69 per cent are integrators, he explained, and struggle to separate home and work, finding themselves not only checking their email after work, “but pressing refresh on Gmail again and again to see if new work has come in.”

That in itself is not revolutionary, Kelloway said, since previous studies about work and family have shown men tend to fall in the segmentor category, while women are more integrators.

But by tracking for longer, Kelloway said Google will be able to see if people shift from their categories overtime: “is that a situational thing? Is that something being foisted on people or is that who they actually are?”

Getting businesses and people to understand the harm in working even when you’re not “is absolutely critical to people’s health and engagement,” said Laura Hambley, a Calgary-based industrial/organizational psychologist.

“People kind of live in the here and now, they’re living with their own deadlines and anxieties and they’re not really thinking of what are the longer-term repercussions of working 60 hours a week,” Hambley said. “Anytime you can get longitudinal data and track the changes over time and especially the results … that’s where you’ll see a lot of impact.”

It’s also something almost every business across Canada could do with little effort, Kelloway said.

“They all do employee engagement surveys,” he said. “The only thing that Google’s doing different really is tracking it across time.”

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